Almond blossom

Damn!  I just found out that what I had thought to be cherry blossom is in fact almond blossom.   Looks the same and I should have known; Portugal is not exactly famous for cherries but its almonds win prizes.  It doesn’t sound quite so comical through Japanese lips, though………

Cherry blossom

Yes, I know it’s snowing in the frozen north but I just wanted to tell you that the Algarve greeted February with cherry blossom; yes, they’re now in bloom and we’ll have snow of an entirely different sort; I could write a haiku on the subject if I knew how to condense a world of feeling into a few syllables of Japanese.  Chelly Brossom. 

The beta readers have almost finished their review of Flight Into Darkness.  I’m grateful for their devotion but am aware that this kind of proof-read has its limitations because it’s impossible to be objective about a novel.  Some like it, some don’t and my experience with beta readers is that they usually tell me what I want to hear whereas what I really want is to hear about what’s bad.   I’m no better.  I can recall the number of manuscripts that I’ve sent out, thinking they were word-perect, only to find out that my understanding of the rules of English grammar was not as good as I had thought.  Well, it’s 45 years since I did them at school.  Give a guy a break!

Before I get the MSs back I have time to waste.  One of the things I have always done is to go to the gym.  Most people would hate it, but it keeps me fit and makes me feel young(er) at heart.  Plus, you get the added benefits of endorphins, nature’s little drug that simply makes you feel good about yourself.  And it’s free.  Personally, I find it rather addictive.  You might think it strange for a retired person to be mixing it with the meat-heads but I’ve always done it and am a creature of habit.  I remember when I was about 35 working out in a gym in a hotel in Cairo when this young Egyptian of about 20 told me that he thought it was good for a person of my age to still be doing weights!   When I was 30 I thought I’d stop at 40 and grow old gracefully.  When that birthday came round, I thought I’d see if I could make 50.  Then I thought, why not try 60?  Now, I’m on the wrong side of that and think I’ll try for 70 and grow old disgracefully.  It’s a strange thing, but most men start to fall apart at 35 but I’ve always felt that we have been tricked by our brains into thinking that our bodies were made for sitting in offices, punching keyboards.  Actually, we still have the bodies of hunter/gatherers and, well, use it or lose it.  So, my overall philosophy is not to give up.  Be as good as you can be until you fall off your perch. 

I wonder whether those cherry trees bloom so wonderfully thinking that it’ll be their last chance.  If they could hear me I’d tell them not to give up.  Next year may not be as good as this year but it’ll still be next year.  Never give up.

It’s done…again…fifth time lucky?

OK, sorry for no posts for a while but now that I’m more settled here and the dreaded midwinter festival is but a memory, I’ve been able to get down to the rewrite of Flight Into Darkness….this is version 5!  This was necessary because of feedback from publishers and a film director, all of which was consistent and difficult to ignore: good plot, needs more pace.

The break from writing was actually very good for me because I was able to tackle it with a fresh mind, although the basic storyline is the same.  In addition, being retired, it’s easy to devote 5 or 6 hours a day to writing, something that I could only do at the weekends when I was working.    Consequently, it has taken far less time than I had expected; from beginning to end  took only two weeks.  I confess I had a writer’s block (or failure of enthuisiasm) before Christmas but with the new year came new inspiration and new ideas.

The main task was eliminating the hero’s girlfriend and replacing her with his female boss, a German Tornado pilot (yes, really), add some sexy sparks and away we go.  Of course, a book is never finished.  Every time I read it, I change something and will never be entirely happy with it.  Now it has to be left to simmer and be inwardly digested, then regurgitated to a couple of beta readers to test the recipe.  Then it’s off to Peter Buckman (Ampersand Agency)  for him to sell the cake.  Hope it doesn’t poison anyone.  My mum and dad (to whom the book is dedicated) will never read it, of course, because they don’t like the F word.  If one of my characters would use it, then I use it.  Basically, when you know your characters well, they write their dialogue themselves.  My fingers just do as they are told and I don’t have much say in the matter.  If you write, you’ll know what I mean.

I always know when I’m completely engaged in a book; it’s when I wake up at three in the morning with a new idea and have to get it down, like recording a dream.  Whilst that’s fine and dandy, I’m now looking forward to some decent nights sleep!  Something strange I have noticed is that I barely needed to touch the original writing for the bad guys.  Must say something about me, although everyone knows that the dragon is always more interesting than the white knight and damsel.  Yawn.

I’m still a little concerned that Peter wanted the hero to be more proactive.  The problem is that I did not intend him to be a proactive character, more Ewan McGregor than Daniel Craig.  As the story moves on, he develops and, by the end, is in control, and I rather like that personal growth.

Now, I can sit back and imagine the Hollywood blockbuster starring Ewan McGregor and Uma Thurman.  I want Jurgen Prochnow as the evil baddy but he’s too old now at 71.  Maybe there’s a younger version of him; someone ugly, tough and complex.  I’ll let you know how the premiere went…..

2012 – Another chance to get it right!

A very Happy New Year!  I guess it’s another chance for the world to adopt fresh new resolutions and retread a few old ones with the intention of getting it right this time.  Posterity will judge but the optimists will always see the opportunities, whether they meet with success or not.  For me, I need to stop smoking and get back to the gym….oh, and finish the rewrite of Flight Into Darkness, which I hope to have done by the end of January, then it’s off to Peter Buckman again.  Next stop, Hollywood?

OK, I said some rather immoderate things about Christmas and the whole midwinter festival thing but, now that it’s finally over, I have to confess that it has actually been rather enjoyable.  We went swimming at Pintadinho beach on Christmas day and this morning, New Year’s Day, which seems to be an Algarve ritual.  It was fresh, I have to say, but the sun was beaming from a cloudless sky; made me feel quite worthy and, as a bonus, it’s a great hangover cure.  We went out to too many restaurants with friends; some English, some Dutch, Romanian, American, Canadian….very cosmopolitan and great fun.  Amazingly, amongst this small group are two writers, both who have been published (one writes non-fiction), and that makes me the odd man out.  So far….. watch this space!

Have a great new year, one and all!

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,300 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 38 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Being British

A Victorian father would tell his children that the greatest blessing that they had was to have been born British.  Those were the days when the sun never set on the Empire and British standards were respected and proudly copied throughout the civilised world.  I can still remember, in one of my frequent trips to India, a Hindi mother castigating her son for speaking Hindi.  “Hindi is for peasants,” she said, glancing in my direction.  “Educated people speak English…”  Maybe she was trying to impress me but, actually, it made me rather ashamed.  I felt that the untended compliment was from a bygone generation and that the poor woman was thinking of a Britain that had ceased to exist. 

My anger at British intransigence and selfish arrogance has been brought to the boil over the next EU treaty which UK will not be party to.  Of all the EU member states, UK will not be part of it.  And they’re touting it as a kind of triumph.  The arrogance beggars belief.  This is a time when the world’s capitalist economies need to work together to sort out the mess that the bankers have created for us.  Economies are in recession, people are unemployed and any small world event, maybe in the Middle East, could push the world into a new depression.  So, while 26 EU member states decide to work together, the UK has decided that it knows better.  On its own.  If anyone needed evidence of just how much David Cameron is in the pockets of the bankers, they need look no further.  

My old friend and former colleague Naomi Gluckstein, has blogged about it as well; see http://naomismag.livejournal.com/ .  We are both Europeans, having worked for various European institutions, and live outside the UK.  We try to be Europeans and find ourselves ashamed to admit to being British.  She says:

After David Cameron’s so called ‘brave stand’ as praised by the majority of the UK press, one can only feel depressed to see one’s country go so far out on a limb. The Brits have never understood or been interested in the EU or being part of it, they are still living in the past. The nonsense being spouted by the Eurosceptics makes me angry. The Brits are not hard workers, they are not willing to take any job to get out of unemployment, and they are happy in blaming the EU for all their woes. Over here in Euroland, if you’re on the dole it’s for a fixed period and you have to go to interviews – turn down three job offers and that’s it. It’s not perfect over here by a long chalk but at least in Belgium we’re aware of what our neighbours and fellow europeans are doing; There are no continuing silly press articles about EU regulations either. And why the hell SHOULD the Germans bail everyone out while the UK stands on the sidelines and whinges? Germany went through the enormous financial upheaval over reunification, they didn’t beg for cash to do so either, they just went on with it. The British press seems to be willing the euro to fail, aaarrgh! the whole business makes me mad!

 

It may come as no surprise to know that, having lived in Germany for seven years, I am rather pro-German.  That country has developed  a society that seems to know how best to react to events.  Their economy is not on its knees, they work, they have industry, they export and they play their part in Europe.  Their people do not live on credit and that leads to a national sense of responsibility that the Brits could learn from.

 

Learn from Germany?  Heaven forbid! 

Bah! Humbug!

You don’t need me to tell you that it’s that time of the year again, folks; Christmas is coming and the geese are starting to get nervous.  It’s time to write those Christmas cards to the people you haven’t seen for years but who ritually keep sending them to you.  It made me remember that I haven’t given our address to most of our friends so here it is:  Sesmarias Country Club Lote 4, Carvoeiro LGA, 8400-561 Lagoa Algarve, Portugal. 

Good.  That’s out of the way.  Now to today’s rant.  I hate Christmas.  I always have because I think it is a time for children and without them it’s just an excuse for a festival of excess; spend too much money, eat too much, drink too much, try to feel jolly and be forced to have a good time.  Ho ho ho.  Actually, I’m not averse to having a good time, it’s just that when the event is fixed on the calendar, I feel that some of the spontantaity is lost.  And what is it with all these bloody presents?  I don´t want anything – well, except maybe Season Three of Lark Rise to Candleford and I can order that myself from Amazon.

Joy to the world!  Peace and goodwill to all men.  Nice idea but the world is just as bad after Christmas as before it and just gets worse.  The whole of Christmas is fuelled by ritual and an unholy commercialism that sticks in my throat.  I heave a heavy sigh when I see the first Christmas decorations go up in the shops.  October, I think it was, and I’ve been in a seasonal depression ever since.  I should put up a few decorations myself but can never be bothered.  Maybe a token bit of tinsel and a sprig of mistletoe.  A mince pie or two.  Oh, bugger it.  What’s the point?  You only have to take them down again and more than two mince pies makes me sick.

As everyone knows, Christmas was invented by Charles Dickens, Coca-Cola and Bing Crosby.  Before Dickens, Christmas was a midwinter festival, the original Roman Saturnalia which had been cleverly hijacked by the early Christians.  Father Christmas was originally the German Weihnachtsmann and was green; I think Prince Albert invited him to England and introduced him the Dickens, thus was born A Christmas Carol.  Coca-Cola, of course, invented the red-cloaked Father Christmas who comes down chimneys.  For God’s sake, where did they get that ludicrous idea from?  I won’t go into the physical problems or the impossibility of visiting every good child in the world in a few hours.  At least children learn about making others believe that they believe all that crap because they get presents by doing so.  That’s a useful life lesson, I suppose; accept such a blatant untruth in the interests of personal gain.   He comes in a bloody flying sleigh as well…dragged along by suicidal reindeer, one with a red nose.  No wings.  It´s a good job no one gets to capture the real Santa because he would probably be sectioned and put in the loony bin. 

And where did the idea of cutting down a perfectly healthy tree, dragging it into the house and watching it die come from?  Another German ritual brought to England by Prince Albert (or Albrecht; his real name).  I suppose Queen Victoria might have been amused but then she didn’t have to clean up the needles.   Bing Crosby is responsible for the rest, that sugary confection of chestnuts roasting on an open fire and all that shit.  But I guess it all helps to sell stuff and that’s what it’s all about.

The only bright glimer is the chance to listen again to some great Christmas music.  The nativity parts of Handel´s Messiah are wonderful but, for me, the best is Bach´s Christmas oratorio, a collection of four seasonal oratorios that say more than all the jingle bells and winter wonderlands.

In Catholic Portugal, Christmas is not a great thing; the modern Christmas is a northern European invention – back to the midwinter festival, but there’s no midwinter here; the bougainvilleas are still in bloom, we never get frost, let alone snow.  As I write, it’s 20 degrees outside and sunny.  Nevertheless, we will still put up the wreath on the door daring the elements with ‘Let it snow!’ 

Then there’s that dreadful dead period between Christmas and new year.  I hate that as well.  What is there to do except watch repeats on the telly, watching other people having a good time, and getting pissed.  Well, there are other alternatives.  Writing for one; I’ll be doing the rewrite of Flight Into Darkness after a long furlough.  Should keep me off the wine for a while, at least. 

Then bloody New Year.  Invented by the Scots as an excuse to drink more whisky.  Say no more.  Normally, there is a 15 minute firwork display from Portimão but this year local government austerity has reduced it to one minute.  True.  Don’t blink. 

Sigh.  I wish I could take a hibernation pill that sends me to sleep on the 24th December and lets me wake up on the 1st of January.  Now, that would be a nice Christmas present.

Fado

Music is a large part of my life  but, before I came to Portugal, I admit to having been a bit sniffy about Fado, Portugal’s only significant contribution to music; it’s a country that has produced no world-status composers apart from those that hail from Brazil.  Fado means fate or destiny and the songs are mostly sad.  They sing of lost love, lost chances, regrets and all the subjects that are normally ignored by the glossy artistes that we are used to.  The world has to be a happy place, doesn’t it?  Well, yes and no.  There’s surely room for something that recognises that life isn’t always a basket of roses.   Saudades form a major theme; this word is difficult to translate but can best be described as a longing, call it homesickness or however we northern Europeans try to compartmentalise emotions.  Saudades is sadness, but with happy memories and that, in most cases, is Fado.  It is performed by a solo singer, male or female, accompanied by a Portuguese guitar (a large 12-string mandolin that can sound like a harp) plus a Spanish guitar.  The instrumentalists have free rein to improvise, as does the singer, and the result is rather lovely, simple, pure, clear and emotional.  The diva of Fado was Amalia Rodrigues.  If I have to compare her to anyone it would be to Edith Piaf; they both sing from the soul, but Amalia is less grating on the ear.

On a whim, I bought a Fado CD set from our local post office.  Tonight, we had Luis’s mother, Celeste, to dinner and I played the CDs to her.   While I listened to the vocal artistry and the instrumental ornamentation, I glanced in her direction; she was listening with her eyes closed, conducting with her arthritic hands, transported back two generations. Later, she told me how, when she was young, she had seen Amalia Rodrigues in Lourenco Marques, how divine she was, how they had so much difficulty getting tickets, so much trouble parking.  Mozambique was then an outpost of empire and a visit by Amalia was something to tell your grandchildren about.

For a while, as she had listened to the music, Celeste had been a young teenager again; you could see it in her eyes and smile; a sparkle of youth’s optimism that said that nothing could ever really go wrong, listen to the words and be sad because life won’t really be like that.  Fado is like watching a play, surely; experience the emotions then come back to your life.  But fate has a way of biting you on the hand.

It was wonderful to watch the magic wrought by those simple words and music.  So, I am a convert. Now, I realise that Fado isn’t a play, it’s real life.  Maybe that’s why Celeste loves it so much.

Building bridges

Last night, I drove my son James to the airport.  He’d been with us for two weeks and his girlfriend, Romy, was with us for the first of those.  It had been their first visit to Luis and me, their first visit to Portugal, so was untrodden ground.  They both graduated this year and, for them, it was a chance to chill out and for us it was….well…maybe I’d better go back a bit.

I got divorced when James was pre-school, so me as a father is a rather hypothetical concept as he had soon a step-dad, Chris, who, incidentally, I have always had a lot of time for.  My role became more like an uncle and, as my job took me to far places then to the continent, I have never been as close to my children as I should have been; send cards, send presents, a bit of cash when needed, you know the sort of stuff.  In the case of James, this distance was partly me because he was not told I was gay until he was mid-teens, so I always felt rather sensitive to the fact that Dad’s ‘friends’ were rather more than that.  OK, regrets are the past crippling us in the present so time to put things right.

Now I look back on his jorney to adulthood, we never really had much of a chance to talk about things that mattered; it was all more matter-of-fact, he more interested in chilling with his friends and I more interested in the drink in my hand.  Such is the way of things in most families, I suspect, now that the evening family dining ritual has faded into memory.  Well, here, we had a chance to try to build a bridge over twenty years and the setting was food.  Good food.  James turns out to be the new Jamie Oliver, only better spoken.  Over numerous meals and too many bottles of vinho, I rediscovered my son and found that blood really is thicker than water.  How nice to be able to say that you are proud of the way your children have turned out, not that I claim anything more than genetics.

What impressed me about James and Romy was how ‘together’ they were.  Not just as a couple, but in their understanding of a world that is a bit alien to me, as an old fart.  They have the optimism of the young and the years to make it all happen.  Never mind that they are new graduates, and life is tough these days.  They understand their world, are comfortable with it, and will mould it the way they want.  They can change things and they will. because the future is theirs.  They have enthusiasm and the years to do it and I’m happy for them.

I’m happy for me as well, because every parent is content once their children are off on their own, knowing what they want and doing it together.  I feel I’ve regained part of myself that I thought I’d lost.

I should have taken twenty years writing this, not ten minutes, but I write it with a smile on my face; a smile that I hadn’t expected and one that will probably stay pasted to my soul.

Come back soon!

Seasonal Blues

It’s as if the creator had flicked a switch marked ‘Heaven’ to the ‘Shit’ position.  Although we’re not on first name terms, I’m prompted to ask why He can’t organise some smooth transition from summer to winter so that it comes as less of a trauma.  In the frozen north we’re used to it because the autumnal shock is rather muted, heralded in advance and anticipated.  In Portugal, we go from high summer to something that Noah and his ark would be quite familiar with but it happens in an instant, like the clocks going back; at about two in the morning.  The swallows and swifts have departed for the south and, as I write, the rain is sheeting down in squally bursts, roads have become rivers, windows opaque.  The sky is leaden and drags my mood down with it.

OK, I know that  it’ll pass, and I remember that last winter was bright and blue for most of the time.  I can’t say that it’s cold but that didn’t stop us having a fire last night; the first this winter.  Now that’s compensation.  The light has started washing from the sky by 5:30 but flaming logs bring the colours of sunset inside to warm your soul.  For six months of the year, we mostly live outside but, now that it’s wet and wild, the  warmth of the hearth beckons with a smile.  Nothing nicer than listening to the rain pelting against the windows whilst cozying up, golden sprites  dancing off our faces and over the walls, the fire glowing like a ruby’s reflection in a glass of wine.

Carvoeiro is getting much quieter now with few people about. Like a theme park in winter, the visitors have gone into hibernation.  It’s not a real working village and only exists for the holiday trade; half of the restaurants will close for a couple of months but there are enough expats to keep the place alive, although its pulse will be weak.

I’ve spent Christmas here most years recently and promise not to be disappointed.  I know that nothing much will happen here, there will be few lights and Santa is a northern European invention (actually, I think he was invented by Coca-Cola).  There will be no snow, deep and crisp and even, no Feast of Steven, nor any holy or ivy.  Ye Faithful will be with their familes indoors and rarely venture out.  In this Catholic country, Christmas is a muted affair and there has never been a tradition to drag some poor wilted tree indoors to drop needles everywhere.  So, that will be Christmas.  New Year will come in with the usual fireworks as Portimao and Ferragudo compete with each other from either side of the Rio Arade.  Carvoeiro itself will be a ghost town.  January will be as if the village had fallen asleep but visitors will start to migrate from Canada in February and March, fed up of the Canadian winter but not able to face Florida again.  Then comes Easter; the season will kick off again and winter will be but a memory.

Seems like wishing my life away, but I guess winter’s always like that.